This chapter explores the relationship of the Homeric Hymns to other early hexameter hymns and their possible genesis from theogonic hymns and cult myth. Comparison is made between the Hymns and ...
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This chapter explores the relationship of the Homeric Hymns to other early hexameter hymns and their possible genesis from theogonic hymns and cult myth. Comparison is made between the Hymns and Hesiod's Theogony and Works and Days, but also to the evidence for an Orphic hymnic theogony contained in the Derveni papyrus and the mock bird theogony in Aristophanes' Birds, among other texts. It is suggested that the Homeric Hymns may have developed as epicized elaborations of theogonic hymns.Less

Homeric and Un‐Homeric Hexameter Hymns : A Question of Type

William D. Furley

Published in print: 2011-06-30

This chapter explores the relationship of the Homeric Hymns to other early hexameter hymns and their possible genesis from theogonic hymns and cult myth. Comparison is made between the Hymns and Hesiod's Theogony and Works and Days, but also to the evidence for an Orphic hymnic theogony contained in the Derveni papyrus and the mock bird theogony in Aristophanes' Birds, among other texts. It is suggested that the Homeric Hymns may have developed as epicized elaborations of theogonic hymns.

Chapter 5 views adaptation as a fragmentation of the classical text, drawing on Erika Fischer-Lichte’s use of the ritual notions of sparagmos and ōmophageia. The adaptations under examination here ...
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Chapter 5 views adaptation as a fragmentation of the classical text, drawing on Erika Fischer-Lichte’s use of the ritual notions of sparagmos and ōmophageia. The adaptations under examination here depart from the ritualized stagings of Greek tragedy in the late 1960s and 1970s in that they adopt a deconstructive approach to tragedy. The collage of the diachronic appropriations of Euripides’ Medea in Tony Harrison’s Medea: A Sex-War Opera puts in historical perspective the feminist issues that the play addresses. In Caryl Churchill’s A Mouthful of Birds the fragmentation of the Bacchae and the dance element complement each other in order to resist the everyday violence involved in prescribed gender roles. Finally, in Heiner Müller’s Medeamaterial the sparagmos of the tragic text depicts the fragmentation of Medea’s body as well as the disintegration of the writing subject in the ruins of post-war Europe.Less

Textual Fragments and Sexual Politics

Eleftheria Ioannidou

Published in print: 2017-01-05

Chapter 5 views adaptation as a fragmentation of the classical text, drawing on Erika Fischer-Lichte’s use of the ritual notions of sparagmos and ōmophageia. The adaptations under examination here depart from the ritualized stagings of Greek tragedy in the late 1960s and 1970s in that they adopt a deconstructive approach to tragedy. The collage of the diachronic appropriations of Euripides’ Medea in Tony Harrison’s Medea: A Sex-War Opera puts in historical perspective the feminist issues that the play addresses. In Caryl Churchill’s A Mouthful of Birds the fragmentation of the Bacchae and the dance element complement each other in order to resist the everyday violence involved in prescribed gender roles. Finally, in Heiner Müller’s Medeamaterial the sparagmos of the tragic text depicts the fragmentation of Medea’s body as well as the disintegration of the writing subject in the ruins of post-war Europe.